Just in case this isn't clear yet, it isn't that the mentioned part of the regex is matching the whole line, it is that the regex is failing and no substitution is taking place

It does no good to have an unanchored .* at both ends.

This looks like one of the regex optimizer bugs. You should post it to comp.lang.perl.moderated or submit it with perlbug.

I'd write this: 

if(  $_ =~ / to=([^,]+), /  ) {
    $to_addr = $1;
} else {
    warn "Unmatched to= in line: $_";
}

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In reply to Re: Strange Behavior while Parsing Sendmail logs by tye
in thread Strange Behavior while Parsing Sendmail logs by Russ

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